‘We need to get out into the field,’ he said. ‘I need to see the house where she lived, check her route, put my ear to the ground, you know.’
‘Out into the field,’ Jarnebring repeated. Now he’s gone all weird again, he thought.
‘Exactly.’
‘In a health-service nightshirt and hospital slippers,’ Jarnebring said, nodding at Johansson as he lay there on the bed.
‘Ah, yes. That doesn’t work. Okay, when you come back tomorrow it would be a good idea to bring me some clothes. Doesn’t have to be anything special. Just a pair of comfortable trousers, underpants and a shirt. And a pair of shoes. I need shoes.’
‘You think?’ Jarnebring said, trying to sound more positive than he felt.
‘Thank Christ,’ Johansson said, ‘nothing seems to have happened in this case over the past twenty-five years.’
‘Well,’ Jarnebring said, ‘a couple of things did happen, actually. In the spring of 1989, when Helene Nilsson was murdered down in Skåne, the investigation was dug up again. To see if there were any plausible connections between Helene’s murder and that of Yasmine. There was nothing to suggest a link, and as soon as they got hold of Yasmine’s killer’s DNA it became obvious that we were dealing with two different people. So it was shut down again.’
‘And nothing’s happened since then?’
‘The usual routine follow-ups and comparisons with new cases that have come in over the years. Last winter, six months before the case got prescribed, the idea was that the Cold Case Unit in Regional Crime in Stockholm would make one last attempt, but then someone shot that prosecutor out in Huddinge in the head and they got lumbered with something else to do instead.’
‘Cold cases,’ Johansson snorted. ‘No one should waste their time on that shit. Murders are perishable goods.’
‘Sounds like a wise attitude,’ Jarnebring said. ‘Very wise,’ he added, for some reason.
‘So what are you two sitting here plotting?’ said Pia Johansson, who was suddenly standing in the doorway to Johansson’s room.
21
Wednesday evening, 14 July
Jarnebring gave Pia a hug, even though she was already standing by the bed and stroking her husband’s cheek. Then he cleared his throat and stuffed his notes in his pocket.
‘Well, time to think about getting going,’ he said.
‘Yes, definitely. Look after yourself, Bo, and see you tomorrow. And don’t forget what you promised.’
‘What’s he promised this time?’ asked Pia, looking inquisitively at Jarnebring.
‘Neither sausage nor vodka,’ Jarnebring replied. ‘I just promised to look in, that’s all. He’s starting to get back to his usual self again, so I’ve got good reason to keep an eye on him.’
Then he nodded, patted his best friend on the shoulder and walked towards the door. There he stopped briefly and nodded once more.
‘Bo isn’t quite himself,’ Johansson said once the door was closed. ‘I think this has hit him hard,’ he explained. Why am I saying that? he wondered. She could see for herself that Jarnebring wasn’t himself.
Pia sat beside him on the bed. She leaned forward as she gently stroked his cheeks and forehead with her fingers.
‘So how are you, then?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ Johansson nodded. ‘I’m tired, and a bit low, to be honest, but I feel better than I have for a long time.’
‘I had a word with the nurse. She says you’re not eating very well. You’ve got to eat. You realize that, surely?’ She looked at him sternly.
‘I do eat,’ Johansson said. ‘Soured milk and fruit and vegetables and fibre and loads of stuff like that. I’ve eaten two bananas and an apple. Bo brought a whole bagful.’
‘No sausages,’ Pia said.
‘No.’ Johansson shook his head. ‘I don’t feel like eating that sort of thing any more.’
‘So, what were you and Bo talking about, then? I heard he’s been here all afternoon.’
‘Old memories,’ Johansson answered. ‘Old memories that I’ve forgotten. From work, mainly. Nothing that concerns us,’ he added. Why did I say that? he thought.
‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Do you want to get some sleep?’
‘Only if you want to sleep next to me,’ Johansson said.
‘If you budge over a bit and promise not to snore.’
‘I promise.’
Then he budged over a bit and lay on his side. She lay down beside him. He put his good arm round her and hugged her carefully. Then he fell asleep. And slept, just slept; no dreams that night, even though he should probably have dreamed about Yasmine.
22
Thursday morning, 15 July
Life was becoming more structured and organized with each passing day. First, he hobbled to the toilet, managing with just the rubber-pointed stick, even though he couldn’t actually hold it in the right hand. Never mind the fact that he was followed by an anxious nursing assistant.
Then he took his medication and ate his new, nutritious breakfast. He must have dozed off again, because when he looked up Ulrika Stenholm was sitting beside his bed. Smiling at him, her head tilted. But what else was he expecting?
‘You’re improving by the day,’ she said.
‘Have you found her?’ Johansson asked.
‘Found her?’
‘That informant,’ Johansson said. ‘You promised to look through your father’s papers.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘No, I haven’t found her. But I have started looking. He left a huge amount to go through. There must be twenty boxes and bags of his old papers. All sorts of things: newspaper cuttings, notes, outlines of sermons, old diaries, letters: so many letters and postcards.’
‘Is it in chronological order?’ Johansson asked.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. ‘But now you mention it, I suppose he collected it as time went on, so to speak. But there’s not much of a system. It’s all mixed up. But yes, there’s probably some sort of chronological order. I suppose that did cross my mind yesterday, actually, when I was reading a load of letters he’d saved. They all seemed to be from the same year, the ones that were dated, anyway.’
‘When did you say he retired?’
‘In 1989, in the summer. I have a feeling it was the start of the summer. Why do you ask?’
‘Try to find the papers covering the last two years when he was working. From the summer of ’89 to the summer of ’87,’ Johansson said. ‘Start with ’89 and work backwards.’
‘What about 1985, then? Yasmine was murdered in the summer of 1985, after all. You don’t think I should start there?’
‘Do as I say,’ Johansson said. And she’s supposed to be intelligent, he thought.
‘Okay, now I’m getting curious. Why do you want me to work backwards?’
‘It usually takes a while for people to squeeze out something like this,’ Johansson said. You’re definitely not a police officer, he thought.
Then he met his physiotherapist and set two new personal records. First, pressing his little red ball in his right hand, and then bending his right arm. He managed to lift it almost halfway as she stood alongside, pushing him on.
‘Your shoulder, Lars. I know you can do it. Come on, touch your shoulder.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Johansson said. Tomorrow is another day, he thought.
He was certainly feeling more cheerful. Even though he hadn’t managed to touch his shoulder, he felt so much brighter that he even dared to try the beef-and-beetroot patty he was served for lunch. But not the sauce, and not the potato. There had to be some limits.
And he managed it in good time as well, because the nursing assistant had only just taken his tray away when Jarnebring showed up in his room with three big folders under his arm. But no trousers, and no shirt. Not even a pair of shoes.
23
Thursday afternoon, 15 July
Jarnebring sat d
own beside the bed and put the folders on the sheets.
‘What the hell is all that?’ Johansson said, nodding towards the folders. Where the hell are my trousers? he thought.
‘You remember Kjell Hermansson, Herman? You must remember him?’ Jarnebring looked at him. ‘That younger colleague who worked in Violent Crime when you and I were at Surveillance?’
‘Stop nagging,’ Johansson said. ‘Yes, I remember Herman.’ But what the fuck has he got to do with my trousers? he thought.
‘Good lad. A smart policeman. He’s been at Regional Crime for the past few years. He’s head of the group working on cold cases.’
‘Oh.’ Still no mention of the clothes he’d been promised.
‘When I realized how interested you were, I thought I’d have a word with Herman,’ Jarnebring said. ‘It turns out that he’s got all the files relating to the investigation into Yasmine’s murder. It’s prescribed now, as you now. Only missed the new legislation by a couple of weeks. So I had a chat with him – he says hello, by the way – and asked him to dig out the sort of thing you usually like to look at.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘The initial report, crime-scene analysis, all the forensic details, post-mortem report, all the witness statements from the mother and father and the people who saw her, a summary of the door-to-door inquiries – all the usual, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘So here it is,’ Jarnebring said, opening the first folder. ‘And I’ve removed all the staples to make it easier for you to look through them. And I’ve added blank paper after every couple of pages in case you want to make any notes. Makes it easier, what with your arm and everything. The first sheet’s the list of contents, then the initial report, followed by everything else, exactly the way you like it.’
‘That’s very kind of you, Bo,’ Johansson said. ‘Extremely considerate,’ he added, and realized he was on the verge of bursting into tears again.
Fortunately, he managed to grab a paper tissue so he could blow his nose loudly a few times until the worst of it had settled down.
‘Are you okay, Lars?’ Jarnebring asked, looking at him with concern.
‘Fine. It’s the drugs,’ he lied. ‘They fill you up with snot.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ Johansson said. ‘Anyway, what the hell happened to my clothes? Didn’t you promise to bring them so you could take me out to get a look at the place where she lived? Get a feel for the route between her mum and her dad? And I’d like to take a look at the site where she was found, too. Out at Skokloster.’
‘I spoke to Pia,’ Jarnebring answered. ‘And the nurse here on your ward. Neither of them thought it was a good idea.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Bo. What’s that got to do with anything? I’m an adult, aren’t I? I haven’t been sectioned. So it’s high time you and Pia and everyone else started treating me like a full citizen.’
‘Well, for the time being I’m going to treat you as an ordinary patient,’ Jarnebring said. ‘As long as you stop making a fuss, of course, because if not I’ll treat you like an ordinary, awkward mental patient, and you wouldn’t have been able to handle that even when your right arm was working properly.’
Johansson said nothing. He didn’t really feel anything either. He certainly wasn’t about to start crying.
‘Where do you want to start?’ Jarnebring asked.
‘Tell me how she died.’
‘You’ve got everything in the files,’ Jarnebring said, holding up a different one. ‘If you want to read it for yourself, I mean. That’s all in this one. The post-mortem report, forensic examination, the results from the National Forensics Lab, analysis of the scene and her clothes – the whole lot.’
Johansson shook his head. He didn’t feel like going through a load of paperwork. Anyway, as soon as he tried to read his headache began to come back.
‘It’s better if you tell me,’ Johansson said. ‘Start by telling me how she died. Who was it who did the original post mortem, by the way?’
‘Sjöberg. The professor. The old legend, Sjöberg. He could do two post mortems at the same time while simultaneously giving a lecture to people like you and me while he was dissecting them.’
‘I thought he’d already retired by then?’
‘He had,’ Jarnebring said. ‘But the forensic medical unit was in a state of total chaos that summer. You remember that pathologist, the one who was suspected of killing that prostitute? That was the previous summer—’
‘Yes, I remember him,’ Johansson interrupted. He was hardly any crazier than anyone else there, he thought.
‘He was suspended from duty. A couple of his colleagues had already resigned, and Sjöberg’s successor, that idiot from Yugoslavia, the one who was so short-sighted he used to say hello to the yucca plant down in reception when he arrived at work each morning—’
‘I remember him,’ Johansson said. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’
‘Nothing.’ Jarnebring shook his head to emphasize his words. ‘He’d gone off abroad to do some research. That wasn’t the biggest problem, though, if you ask me. Anyway. There was hardly anyone left there. So Sjöberg went back to make sure that there was at least some semblance of organization at his former workplace. And he was particularly diligent when it came to tracking down people who had raped and murdered young girls, as you doubtless remember.’
‘Sjöberg,’ Johansson said. ‘Utterly relentless. When he got things right, you didn’t need police, prosecutors or judges.’ Couldn’t be better, he thought. ‘I’m listening,’ he went on, and leaned back on his bed.
24
Wednesday, 26 June 1985
The post mortem on Yasmine Ermegan’s body was conducted on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 June 1985. The report was compiled and signed three days later, on Wednesday 26 June, by Dr Ragnar Sjöberg, professor emeritus and MD. His signature is perfectly legible, the handwriting neat, harmoniously rounded, gently backward-sloping. A fully rounded personality.
Jarnebring and his colleagues had received a preliminary report before that, on the evening of Saturday, 22 June. A few days later, the same day he sent the full report over by courier, Sjöberg rang Jarnebring and asked him and his colleagues from Surveillance to come over for a ‘confidential and open discussion’. On the condition that they didn’t bring Evert Bäckström with them.
‘I can’t even bear to look at that little idiot,’ Sjöberg had explained. ‘The only consolation when I do see him is that I’m convinced he’s going to end his days in my old workplace, and probably in such a state that even I couldn’t make any sense of it.’
With this pious hope fresh in his mind, Jarnebring and his colleagues enjoyed a long and very rewarding conversation with the old legend.
Yasmine Ermegan had weighed ‘approximately 33 kilos’ and had been ‘approximately 133 centimetres tall’ when she died. The reason why Sjöberg couldn’t be more precise was that she had been dead for almost a week and her body had spent most of that time wrapped in black plastic and pressed into the mud in a patch of reeds a couple of kilometres north-west of Skokloster Castle in Uppland.
Yasmine had been smothered, probably with a pillow, seeing as Sjöberg had found a piece of down in her throat and a couple of threads of white fabric between her teeth.
‘She bit into the pillow while he was smothering her, which explains the down and fabric,’ Sjöberg said. ‘I want to stress that,’ he emphasized. ‘The down didn’t get there when she was lying among the reeds. That dog may have torn the plastic she was wrapped in, but that was at the bottom of her body. Besides, it was so far down her throat it could only have got there while she was still breathing.’
Before she was smothered, Yasmine had been raped, penetrated vaginally. The injuries to her genitals were those that always happened when a grown man assaulted a young girl in that way. Sexual secretions from the perpetrator had been gathered from her vagina but no actual sperm. There was, however
, plenty of that on her stomach, chest and in her hair. And on her pink T-shirt.
‘He pulled out before orgasm and ejaculated across her stomach, chest and head,’ Sjöberg explained to Jarnebring and his colleagues.
Yasmine’s body showed no traces of the expected defensive injuries, and Sjöberg and his colleagues at the National Forensics Laboratory had found the explanation for this in her blood and several of her internal organs in the form of a powerful and fast-acting sedative. More than three times the recommended dose, given her age and weight.
‘The only consolation in this tragic story is that she must have been unconscious when he assaulted her,’ Sjöberg concluded.
‘But she bit the pillow when he smothered her?’ Jarnebring queried. Best to ask, just to make sure, he thought.
‘That sort of thing can happen out of reflex when you’re being asphyxiated,’ Sjöberg said. ‘Unless, very regrettably, she was on the point of regaining consciousness. Because he had been busy with her for some time, or because she began to be aware of the pain in her crotch. Or both,’ he said with a sigh.
‘Apart from that, the little lass was in good health,’ Sjöberg continued. ‘No healed fractures, no sign of past inflammations. She seems to have been in perfect health.’
‘Do you have any idea how it might have happened?’ Jarnebring asked.
‘Why do you think I asked you to come here?’ Sjöberg said with a slight smile. ‘I thought I’d let you have all the things you lot are always begging for and which every sensible practitioner of my profession never commits to paper.’
‘In which case, we’re extremely grateful,’ Jarnebring said.
‘Yes, well.’ Sjöberg shrugged his shoulders. ‘Anyway, I’m retired now, and who’s got the stamina to argue with a pensioner? This is what I think happened . . .’
First the perpetrator tricked her into taking the sedative, which, seeing as it was fairly bitter, had probably been diluted in a very sweet, strong-tasting drink.
‘According to the contents of her stomach, it could have been Coca-Cola,’ Sjöberg said. ‘Or juice – something like that. Something that would have hidden the taste of the drug, basically.’
The Dying Detective Page 8
